Only eliminating the SBT and ensuring a bold net reduction in business taxes can begin to trump Michigan’s other handicaps in its economic competition with other states and nations. Even eliminating the SBT and cutting state spending dollar-for-dollar is not impossible; the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has detailed billions in potential state budget savings in areas like Medicaid, education and corrections.
The world economy is relentlessly, ruthlessly competitive. Michigan has no entitlement to a healthy economic future. Unless Lansing finds the courage to abandon “business‑as‑usual,” the state’s economy — and the people of Michigan — will fall further and further behind.
Maybe what’s needed in the public schools is more profit, not less. Think about it: Where is the crisis in public education these days? Is it in the availability of desks, food or computers, or in other areas provided by the for-profit private sector? The crisis concerns the classroom — the part delivered by government, regulated by legislatures and supervised by district bureaucracies.
At the end of fiscal 2000, Michigan budget officials informed lawmakers that the treasury had received $600 million more than had been budgeted. Rather than return it to taxpayers, state legislators went on a spending spree that included a new polar bear exhibit for the Detroit Zoo.
In innovative and very pragmatic new contracts with Ford, Chrysler and leading suppliers Delphi Corp. and Visteon Corp., the UAW finally consented to different levels of compensation for members who previously were entitled to the same, famously rich packages.
In spite of this year’s candidates singing interminable paeans to “our democracy,” America is thankfully not one and never has been. Our founders established a republic, modifying democracy considerably.
State compliance requirements divert enormous resources toward monitoring the process followed by local mental health authorities, while doing little to measure whether patients in the system actually get better.
For the past 87 years, the Netherlands has enjoyed a universal, nationwide school-voucher program. Dutch high school seniors and recent graduates score first in the world in mathematics, second in science and fourth in literacy.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that selective favors discriminate against those who do not receive them and distract policymakers from the broader business-climate reforms that would benefit everybody.
“In every city and town,” historian Stewart Holbrook wrote in 1947, “the multiplicity of time standards confused and ewildered passengers, shippers and railway employees. Too often, errors and mistakes turned out disastrously. …”
“[Canadian health care] produces inferior age-adjusted access to physicians and technology, produces longer waiting times, is less successful in preventing deaths from preventable causes and costs more than any of the other [health care] systems that have comparable objectives.” — The Fraser Institute of Vancouver, British Columbia
I have looked carefully at the relationship between economic growth and state spending on universities. I found a strong negative relationship — higher state spending equals lower rates of economic growth.
Between 1995 and 2003, Michigan finished 51st among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in employment growth.
There’s no shortage of examples in which public policy has proved deadly when divorced from science.
Charter schools were created with the idea that “performance will be rewarded and poor performance will be sanctioned.”
A reversal in deregulation would restrict choice in electricity supply, harming rather than benefiting consumers and the businesses that employ them.
As Intel CEO Craig Barrett told Congress, “The sad truth is that the longer our students stay in our schools, the farther they fall behind in math and science.”
Judge Susan Borman delivered a stinging rebuke to government officials who could not show a public necessity for taking over the family’s bridge.
The MEA is alone among NEA state affiliates in requiring objecting teachers of faith to do anything more than write a letter outlining their basic beliefs.
The Michigan Public Service Commission says it wants a “consistent regulatory policy.” Aiming for “consistency in policy usually means protecting special interests.
When we expect the government to substitute for what we ourselves ought to do, we expect the impossible and end up with the intolerable.
Michigan taxpayers are shelling out almost $40 per rider on two Amtrak lines, on top of paid fares. No one has explained why it’s worth that much tax money to put a rider on a train instead of a bus or car.
The governor can’t credibly call for improving the business climate and making Michigan more competitive with other states, while at the same time pushing for overregulation.
Outsourcing greatly lowers our cost of consumption, raises our standard of living tremendously and directly supports many jobs.
Sometimes the most penetrating economic insights come from “real people” in the rough-and-tumble world of small business capitalism.
The Army Corps of Engineers came up with the “migratory molecule” rule, which says that even isolated wetlands fall under federal jurisdiction because there is a theoretical chance that a water molecule from any location may reach a navigable waterway.
“I was told that I could not be hired because my degree is from outside of the state, because I have no union affiliation, or because it would be ‘too difficult to confirm my credentials.’ These were different ‘reasons’ on different occasions,” related Robinson.
To Smiles, the road to riches was not paved with over-reaching ambition, disregard for others, or cutting corners when it came to matters of truth. It didn’t mean securing favors from government at the expense of the competition.
“Because the profits are so fantastic, we’re now seeing drug traffickers, other criminal organizations, and even terrorists involved in tobacco smuggling.”
School districts tempted to dodge the demographic bullet with deluxe buildings and beggar-thy-neighbor policies should think twice. Instead, they should work on what really matters: making their education programs better.
Tuition hikes could actually help those students who truly need help — by enabling the school to offer greater outright gift aid and tuition reductions to students from low-income families, as is often the practice at private universities.
Government school monopolies that typically spend more on failure than most private schools spend on success are, in our inner cities especially, veritable poverty mills.
If the 1994 amendment needs amending at all, it needs it in the form of changes that would increase options for parents and produce greater accountability in the ways that education dollars are spent.
“There is,” he said, “a steady tendency toward polarization of the white and non-white peoples of the world which can lead to ultimate catastrophe for all.”
The stumbling blocks for further innovation today come not from entrepreneurs, venture capitalists or the marketplace, but from the regulators.
There is no need to pressure Cintas into a neutrality or card-check agreement. When a majority of Cintas workers are convinced they want a union, they will vote to have one.
The MEA and MESSA have set up an obstacle course that prevents public schools from introducing competition for teachers’ health care coverage or putting reasonable limits on the extent of care.
The governor’s handling of a $200 million proposal by Plymouth philanthropist Robert Thompson to build 15 charter schools in Detroit was her biggest leadership failure of the year.
A slim majority of county commissioners has so far refused to put the millage on the ballot, citing significant unanswered questions about its economic effects.
No one — neither the governor, nor the legislative appropriations committees, nor the heads of 20 state departments can know where all the money is going.
As LifeSharers grows, so does the incentive to become a registered donor: preferred access to an ever-larger pool of donated organs.
When state governments can tell local school districts what to do with regard to a detail as tiny as whether or not students can buy candy on school grounds, it’s time to question whether local control has become a thing of the past.
Our state and its city governments would do better to focus on their more important functions (schools, roads and public safety, for example), which are often carried out in ways that are anything but cool.
The French can advance civil society only when they get serious about replacing government programs with private initiative, when discussion gets beyond such infantile reasoning as, “If you want to cut government subsidies, you must be in favor of starving the elderly.”
Rather than scrimp on safety measures to gain short-term profits, airlines have found it even more in their interest to ensure the safety of their passengers. No one makes money by putting passengers in danger.
ISDs have become bureaucracies in search of a mission — funded to the tune of $878 million per year in property taxes statewide — with abuses such as those at OISD as the result.
In the end, the blackout was primarily the result of failures at the transmission level — the level where almost no deregulation has occurred.
The risk for parochial and other religious schools in Michigan is that their mission could be undermined by having to cater to union demands.
By every measure, Michigan remains largely a rural state. More than 18 million of Michigan’s 36 million acres is forestland, a share that has actually grown by 2 million acres in the past 20 years.
Gettelfinger no longer can shield UAW members from competitive pressure. Instead, the UAW must prepare domestic autoworkers for competition.
